The present invention is generally related to cellular telephone systems and more particularly to an improved cellular data telephone system and cellular data telephone for providing data and telephone services.
In the prior art cellular telephone systems, telephone calls between two parties continue until their discussions are completed. Since both parties are continuously listening, either can ascertain that the discussions have been terminated and hang up. However, when making data calls on cellular telephone systems, the user is not continuously listening and, as a result, there may be long periods of time when there is no data activity. Since the user is billed for the actual air time used, the user is being charged at a relatively high rate for such long periods of inactivity. Furthermore, the cellular telephone system is needlessly tied up with data calls that could be disconnected during the long periods of inactivity. Accordingly, there is a need for an improved cellular data telephone system and cellular data telephone that maintain data calls only as necessary to communicate data, thereby substantially eliminating long periods of inactivity.